


OASIS

by ivorygates, synecdochic



Series: alternate abydos [2]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-31
Updated: 2007-07-31
Packaged: 2018-05-31 00:37:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6448534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates, https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(The one in which Daniel, his twin Dana're, and Jack were all born on Abydos.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	OASIS

**Author's Note:**

> Second in the 'Alternate Abydos' Series following "Mirage" by Synecdochic.

It is a generous handful of days before Dan'yel returns to his sister's bed. His days and his heart have been full, and this is an eventful time in the House of Kasuf. Sha're-his-eldersister will be lightened of her firstborn before the moons grow full again, and Skaara, heir to the House and the Line is to be wed if Kasuf and Khabare-father-of-Neshat can settle all the details of what-will-be between them. Skaara is enchanted by the girl entirely, and for all that she is too soft of temper to bear Dan'yel's company of her own choosing, Dana're has pronounced her a suitable match for their elder brother, and so Dan'yel is content.

As Skaara is - quite properly - a guest within Khabare's walls while the matter is being determined (so that Neshat has one last chance to set her heart against him, a thing Dan'yel thinks as likely as ice falling from the sky) he and Oneer have been given full privacy in Dan'yel's tent of an evening. Dan'yel has tried Oneer's mind and skill across the senet-board and found both to be strong and agile. In the night, their bodies please one another, and Oneer is no more hesitant upon the sleeping-mat than he is upon the game-board.

The days of Oneer are a matter which is different in kind entirely. He has made himself properly useful to the House, neither laboring from dawn to dusk as if he holds himself as meanly as a servant, nor spending his days lying upon the cushions of idleness as if he thought himself a pampered guest whose good opinion the House must court. Though Bau'thi was filled with something perhaps stronger than wonder when Dan'yel brought to her workroom a man in the strength of his years and said that Oneer desired to work the clay, yet she soon was filled with wonder drawn from a different well, for if Oneer's work was not that of a master of wheel and oven, he despised no task Bau'thi set him, nor forbore to be instructed by a woman. And Bau'thi did come to Dan'yel and say to him that it was as Oneer said, for the names he held on his tongue - Ad'jah and Haf'sha and Kaqet, were all names among the clayworkers known to her mother's mother, and though his skill was a thing as stiff and dry as an untended harness, as the harness might grow supple again with oil, so might the skill of Oneer grow supple again with use.

Yet for all Bau'thi's praise - a thing not lightly won, indeed, neither Sha're nor Dana're ever gained it - Oneer walks cautiously within the House of Kasuf, as a man who expects at any moment he will prove himself unworthy of his new good fortune and have it snatched from him as stolen meat is snatched from the jaws of a starving dog. Yet Oneer is no dog, nor is the meat of his fortune stolen, but a thing freely bestowed. And that, too, is a thing that sits upon Oneer's stomach like a meal of spoiled food, Dan'yel senses, since for all his quiet manner and soft words, he is a man of fire and steel, and to find himself brought to the House of Kasuf by the whim of a woman who cannot possibly know him is a thing that no proper man could have ease within his heart to think on - ai, even should that woman be heart-sister of one to whom Oneer's heart inclines more with each day spent in the House of Kasuf and with each night spent in the tent of Dan'yel. And if Dan'yel has grown to believe, as his own heart inclines to Oneer, that Dana're chose Oneer not for herself alone but for her soul's heart - and perhaps more for him than for herself, for his sister need not love the man who gives children to the House of Kasuf, nor need a daughter of the royal line leave her father's house when she weds, as all other women must, these are not words for him to give to Oneer, until Oneer has better come to know that Dan'yel and his twin are truly one soul in two bodies. Yet truly, at any time since she came to her blood she might have said to him: _'Dan'yel, this one will serve the need of the House,'_ and he would have honored her choice. Yet she had searched long and long until Oneer could be found, and his sister, of all who walks beneath the sun and the moons, knows what a burden the knowing-of-knowings is for him to bear, as much in that it causes all the people to turn their faces from him as in what he must learn and do. Each passage of the moons since he began to understand his true nature - many seasons, many Choosings past - there have been fewer to see Dan'yel-the-man, until there was only Dana're against whom he could test folly and wisdom and be certain of receiving true gold in return.

Until the coming of Oneer.

But a man must not set aside past obligations when new ones arise, nor is his sister an obligation to him, any more than Oneer is an obligation to him. Nor is there need to say overmuch to Oneer, save than that he will not return until morning, for though the servants of the House of Kasuf are well-mannered and well-schooled, all have seen that Oneer holds Dan'yel's favor as true-guest, for all have seen them eat from one plate at the evening meal. And so Oneer nods merely, and tenders to Dan'yel the kiss of peace, and says he trusts he will find his sister well.

When he goes to the room of the house which has been Dana're's alone (unheard-of thing) since the day upon which, in the eyes of custom (though not in truth), Dan'yel had left the women's world to sleep in the tents of men, her women are still with her, readying her for bed. She is damp from her bath, wrapped in a veil, and the women are unbraiding her hair. When she sees him enter, she smiles to see him, and sends her women away. He steps behind her and sets himself to finishing their task; it is a long one, for she will not pin her hair, nor coil it; her hair is braided with cords after the fashion of a boy's (a battle she has not yet lost, as no one sees it beneath her headscarf.) He carefully begins to work each braid free.

"Tell me of Oneer, Dan'yel!" she demands. "He has been many days in our House - is he kind? Is he pleasing to the eye in his body? Is he skilled in the arts of love? Do not close up your words in your throat, Dan'yel - you must tell me all, for my soul cries out to hear!"

The eagerness in her voice makes him laugh. "How shall I say if the face a man shows to a man and the face that he shows to a woman shall be the same? Perhaps you have set your eye upon a man who will not awaken your heart, sister. Perhaps he is such a one who would beat you daily, did he take you to wife."

She makes a sound of vexation at his teasing - never mistaking it, as others might, for the words of the Gods Themselves - and tries to turn upon her stool to slap at him. He places his hands upon her shoulders to hold her in place.

"Ay! I am served with such unkindness by my own brother that I run disordered in my wits! I shall go forth from my father's house and earn my bread by lifting my skirts!"

"Did you do such a thing, even in play, you would not have to wait upon Oneer to beat you, for I would save his arm the trouble," Dan'yel says, and there is a note in his voice that is other than play. There have been more times than should ever be told when his twin's courage has outrun her wisdom, and some adventures are not easily stepped back from.

"But I would know what you know of him, Dan'yel!" she says, and now her tone is pleading. He reaches for the comb and begins to run it carefully through her unbraided hair. "Has he asked after me? What have you said? Indeed, you need not tell me that he is a man of pleasing aspect, for the bath-servants are not blind, nor are _they_ disordered in their wits, and they have seen what is to be seen! But you must tell me those things they could not see!"

Dan'yel laughs, catching her up into his arms. In truth, Oneer has asked of Dan'yel's sister, but in a fashion at which no man could take offense. Oneer is as filled with desire to know of Dana're as she is to know of him, yet it is in Dan'yel's mind that the time to slake both their desires is not yet. She struggles in his arms, laughing up at him, demanding that he stop _terrorizing_ Oneer at once.

"Ah," Dan'yel says, clasping her close, "I do not think Oneer objects to such terror as he receives at my hand, sister."

"You must say to me _all_ those things which Oneer does not dislike, brother," she says, leaning upon his chest, her face alight with a mixture of curiosity, eagerness, and desire. "And you must speak to me of all the things which please him! If I am to be his, these are things which I must know! Surely, Dan'yel, you are now minded to go to Kasuf-our-father and say that you agree that this marriage must be so. And you know that never would I counsel haste in a matter of such great importance, but Oneer has no family which must be consulted, and my family approves - say to me, darling, that you approve - so why should it not be that our _sha'lo'qi_ is not held with Skaara and Neshat's?"

He catches up the bath-veil before it slips to the floor. It is of the finest wool, combed from the coat of the young mastaadge; a wall-painting can be seen through it, even in torchlight. Large enough to cover the whole surface of Dana're's sleeping mats, fine enough to pass through one of her bracelets. He does not answer, merely kissing her upon the brow, the nose, the lips. What she says is true enough, but he will not have it so. Bricks made in a day will make a wall, but such a wall will not endure for season upon season.

"I am not the only one who must be consulted before we may make _sha'lo'qi_ , sister - ai, nor yet Kasuf-our-father," he says at last.

"Who? Who, then, Dan'yel?" she demands. "I promise you, I have sat beside Sha're these many days to discover Oneer's kin-lines, and there is no other who must be spoken with."

"Perhaps it would be well did we consult Oneer upon his wishes," Dan'yel murmurs, leaning down so that his words are spoken against her lips. "I have heard it to be the custom."

"You think he does not want me?" she asks, startled to a man's bluntness of speech, and her eyes are as large and dark with shock as if they were still rimmed in kohl.

"I think he does not yet know you," Dan'yel answers gently. "I think, perhaps, that Oneer is such a one who holds Oneer locked away in his heart even from Oneer, nor would it be well for a brother to give a sister into the hand of a man who will not say that what he sees when he looks upon his own heart is good, even if others may find it so. Until such a day comes - I think it will not be so very long - the time when Oneer and Dana're will meet and speak together beneath the roof of Kasuf-father-of-Dana're must lie in the future. Nor will that future come before Ra's Chariot looks down upon us again, and this is a time for other things."

He sees her set her teeth in her lower lip as she considers his words, but she has seen him render judgments and knowings since long before the hairs started upon his upper lip and her first moon-time came upon her, and even though her heart is filled with hot desire to see the whole of the matter settled and finished and done - for Dana're must always look to the future, setting events into motion with a gesture of seeming recklessness and then demanding that the stew she has prepared cook itself in her time and not the cookfire's - she can sort what she would wish from that-which-is just as she can sort the coarse wool from the fine in comb or clip. She does not even sigh as she steps back, knots her veil about her hips with an expert gesture, and reaches out to begin to remove his garments for the night.

There is love-of-the-body between them thereafter, an accustomed and familiar thing since the days when the wisdom of Ra first awoke the hungers of man and woman in their flesh. As always, Dan'yel takes care that Dana're does not quicken, for his sister is virgin still, and it would be no kindheartedness to Kasuf-their-father to force him to choose between mercy and the law. Nor does it matter that Dan'yel knows already which his father would choose, no matter that as priest-king he should perhaps choose otherwise, nor that Dana're has, at last, a man awaiting her who can be true-husband to her. It will not be so if the marriage must be made in haste, or if it need be made for a reason that is not the proper one. The ways to delight are as many as the grains of sand borne upon the breath of the wind, and they know them as well as they know one another's bodies.

When she lies with her head pillowed upon his shoulder in the moments before sleep, Dan'yel knows that his sister's words are not yet spent. "There is one thing I would hear, if you would tell it," she says at last.

He frowns faintly, for never in all the years of their life has there been a thing she has asked that he would not tell - if for no other reason than that words have been so rarely needed between them that she has hardly needed to ask to know. "I will give you my words if I may," he answers, for the words which hold her question as the cup holds water shape it as well, telling him much before she asks the question itself.

"The man Oneer - does he please you?" _I do not ask for myself, or for what may lie between the man Oneer and Dana're of the House of Kasuf some day to come. I ask for my brother, whom I have loved long before I suspected that Oneer drew breath._

"Yes, sister," Dan'yel answers. "Oneer pleases me."

#


End file.
